10.31.2018

Just Leave

I
need and plan to work more on this story, but it'll do for now. Enjoy!

Just Leave

Warren
and his sister were thick in the midst of sorting out his parents’ estate. Their
mother had died of congestive heart failure a little over two years prior, and
their father, though seemingly healthy overall, had deteriorated in the interim
and recently succumbed to lung cancer, which he hadn’t told anyone about until
the last days. Both had smoked for more than 70 years, and the utter permeation
of the house’s every inch by tar and nicotine was one of the main reasons
Warren hated visiting. That smoke smell would be hell to get out, Warren
worried, especially if they were going to sell the house.

He
had driven the 3 hours or so up to his parents’ house (former house, he kept thinking) that afternoon to sort through some
of his father’s belongings. Will it look
different to me now?, Warren had wondered during the drive. He had only been
there once since his father died and realized that he’d never known a time when
the house had no real owners, no occupants.

But
the house looked the same, of course. An apparent one-story from the front, an
actual two-story from the rear owing to its position on a hillside, the Dimion
homestead was perfectly traditional, discolored tan brick and an aging hip roof
surrounded by an unremarkable but tidy yard. Trees Warren had played in or
around as a kid were long gone, either from age or ice storms. None of the
houses in their neighborhood looked even remotely similar to one another, which
always made Warren feel an involuntary and illogical pride.

He
found the spare key where it had been stashed for years – under a landscaping
stone covered with bark mulch to the front porch’s left – and went in the
house, catching the stinging odor of cigarette smoke before he even opened the
door. Although his sister had texted him earlier in the day to say she’d
already removed most of the furniture, he was unprepared for the empty room
that greeted his entrance: where once had stood a dining table, chairs, TV, and
roll-top desk, now there was only discolored and indented carpet. The sitting
room just to the left was empty as well, and its bare faux-wood floor hollowly
reverberated the closing front door. Only then did it occur to Warren that all
the beds were probably gone too, meaning he’d have nowhere comfortable to
sleep.

Wandering
through the house, the creaky kitchen floor (you entered on the second floor,
at the foundational hill’s apex) sounded louder than he remembered, likely
because of the rooms’ emptiness, and he grinned at the minutiae left behind:
two stained oven mitts hanging next to the stove, a comically obsolete list of
phone numbers taped to the wall, three stair-stepped containers he really hoped
didn’t still contain sugar-free cookies, the incongruously new washer and dryer.

Down
the carpeted and equally creaky stairs, past the chairlift his mother once
used, Warren found more of the same: newly furniture-less carpet, splayed-open
cardboard boxes holding trinkets and photo albums, a metal trash can, a
Garfield sticker on a full-length mirror. The bottom floor was half underground
and smelled reliably dank, an oddly pleasant odor Warren auto-associated with
his youth. Off to the right of the stairs, his father’s bedroom loomed
pitch-black, and Warren felt a twinge of an old childhood fear at approaching
this lightless basement room alone. The fear escalated more than Warren wished
to admit while he slapped around fruitlessly for the light switch, but when his
hands found it, the slow fade of the fluorescent overheads eroded that feeling
and revealed a truly empty space: not only was all the furniture gone but the
carpet and pad had been pulled up as well, owing to the subterranean seepage
against which his parents had fought mostly in vain for nearly 40 years. The
painted concrete floor’s stains and peeling made the room look less like
sleeping quarters and more like an interrogation chamber.

Warren
exited (but left the light on) and walked into what his family had always
called the rec room, a lengthy space (42
feet end to end, his mind hiccupped) that had once held an elaborate
stereo, stacks of vinyl albums, a wall of books, several generations of
video-game consoles (Colecovision through Super Nintendo, if memory served),
and both ping-pong and pool tables. All that remained now was the pool table.
He’d hoped the old futon couch would still be here so he could sleep on it
(uncomfortable though it was), but no. Even the bookshelves and firewood box
were barren.

“The
goddamn pool table,” Warren sighed. No wonder it got left behind. The ping pong
table was bought new and had still, four decades on, been in good shape, though
the net needed replacing. This thing, on the other hand, had become shabby
family legend almost instantly. Warren’s father bought it soon after they’d moved
in from a decrepit billiard hall that was going out of business. It was visibly
worn from day one, boasting scratches and scuffs but also an almost comic
instability – when touched or bumped, it creaked and swayed side to side.
Warren had tightened the relevant bolts countless times (his father was
hopelessly unhandy), but it never lasted long, and this ritual had provided
Warren with one of his favorite memories, a memory that came flooding back as
he stood in this huge, unfamiliarly-empty room. Something about lying on his
back under the pool table put Warren at peace, and he would regularly crawl
underneath it when the legs needed tightening and just stay there, flat on his
back, gazing at the table’s dusty underside, staring at the light seeping evocatively
through the spaces between ill-joined pieces of wood. More than once, Warren
had lost track of time during this weird reverie, never sleeping but perhaps
not entirely conscious, either, eventually rolling out onto the open floor and
rejoining the family upstairs, his parents asking where he’d been all this
time. Warren grinned at the memory’s richness and subliminally understood where
he’d sleep this night. The house held no softer, padded surfaces anymore,
anyway, so what did it matter where he lay?

He
wondered if the balls were still in the table and reached into the return
opening, scraping the back of his hand on broken plastic molding. The balls
were there, all right, and Warren involuntarily grabbed three of them, numbers
4, 5, and 9. He thunked them onto the faded green felt and remembered the
table’s most famous trait: it was warped such that any rail shots curved toward
the center. As kids, he and his friends learned very quickly to use that warp
to their advantage, playing the curve to hit balls that might have been
unreachable on a regulation, defect-free surface. There were no longer any
cues, of course, but Warren picked up the 5 and gently underhanded it along the
right-hand rail, chuckling as it passed the side pocket and arced toward the middle
as he’d seen it do hundreds of times before. Then his muscle memory kicked in
and he grabbed the other two balls, rolling them rapidly toward the 5 and
banking them off the far rails so they’d sink in the corner pockets. It took
him a few tries but he finally sunk them all, enjoying the
still-immensely-satisfying sound of pocketing balls.

Warren
rapped the table surface twice and was walking toward the rec-room windows when
his phone buzzed. You get there OK?,
his sister Alice texted. He re-pocketed his phone, continued to the windows,
and pulled open the curtains. Holly bushes still rose about a third of the way
up the windows; above that Warren saw the few small remaining trees in the
backyard, the top of the viny back fenceline, and the dusky indigo sky tinged
with oranges and purples from the setting sun. He surveyed this scene for a few
moments and was about to reply to Alice when he heard the upstairs floor creak
overhead behind him.

Warren
frowned and looked around at where the sound seemed to have come from. He tried
to remember if Alice was in town – she lived half an hour away with her second
husband and two stepsons – but thought she wasn’t. She had always visited more
regularly than Warren had, so it wouldn’t be unheard of for her to drop by
unannounced, but he half remembered her saying she was traveling this weekend.
He plucked out his phone and typed, Yeah,
easy trip. Are you in town? In a few seconds she replied, No. At the in-laws til Sunday. That’s right. OK. Have fun, Warren sent
back. Alice responded with a thumbs-up emoji.

He
tried to think of any other friends or family members who might have come over
and into the house. His parents, though, had been virtual hermits for the past
20 years, rarely leaving the house and maintaining almost no friendships. Most
of their closest relatives had already died, and those relatives’ offspring
were scattered elsewhere around the country, so Warren doubted there was anyone
left who would be here. A neighbor? Possible but unlikely, as the Dimions had
never consorted much with their neighbors. Hospice or caregivers? Even less
likely – his mother had refused hospice care, and his father didn’t tell anyone
he was dying let alone arrange for hired help. Maybe I imagined it, Warren
thought.

He
was heading back through the long room bound for the stairs when the floor
creaked again, this time directly above him. He stopped and looked up at the
ceiling. “Well. Didn’t imagine that,” he muttered. His pace quickened as he
approached his father’s room (glad I left
the light on, he mused) and climbed the stairs to his right, eyes on the
landing above, not worried about being quiet or stealthy. “Hello?” he said from
the doorway into the empty kitchen. “Somebody here?” He crossed the long
kitchen floor toward the front door looking for signs of ingress but found
none: the balcony door off the kitchen to his left was still closed as was the
front door. He walked through all the upstairs rooms, but they were empty save
for more moving-house minutiae.

He
then walked out into the front yard. The driveway held only his gray Corolla,
and the street was empty other than a few cars parked in front of neighboring
houses. Looking up at the darkening sky, he breathed in deeply for several
moments, savoring the cool, smoke-free air. “Maybe it’s just settling,” he
muttered after a long exhale. As if this idea resolved the issue, he went to
get his overnight bag from the car and had just reached the right-rear-door
handle when he heard the house’s metal security door bang shut. He gasped and
pivoted, heart pounding in his ears. No one was on the front porch, and the
inner door was still open. “What the fuck?” Warren said, uncomfortable at the
quaver in his voice. He immediately got irritated, grabbed his bag from the
car’s backseat, slammed the car door, and marched toward the house, locking the
car with a squeeze of the key fob.

On
the porch, he dropped his bag and opened the security door to full gape so he
could time its closing. He watched as it swung slowly shut, finally slamming
home with a decisive bang. Eight seconds. I
was out here longer than eight seconds, he thought, smirking. He opened the
door again, pushed it all the way to the wall, and held it there for a moment
before releasing it. This time, the door remained idle for one…two…a little
over three seconds before it began its slow arc. After it banged shut again, he
thought, So, say twelve seconds. Enough
time? Warren decided it was. Although he was sure he heard the door close
after he walked out, maybe that was just an aural memory. Maybe it took longer
to ease shut than it used to. “Stop being an idiot,” Warren said to himself
dismissively. He went inside and threw the deadbolts on both front doors.

After
using the restroom and searching fruitlessly for food, he ordered a pizza to be
delivered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later,
under the pool table, Warren watched Netflix for a while on his phone until he
got sleepy. He hadn’t thought to bring a pillow or blanket, so his overnight
bag and windbreaker served these purposes.

With
the curtains drawn, the room was nearly pitch black, and it irked Warren to
discover that he was scared. The pool table was at the far end of the long room
relative to the door, meaning he was all-too aware of the forty-plus feet of
darkness nearby. He resisted the urge to pull his windbreaker over his head and
instead just focused on the table’s underside until his eyes began to get
heavy.

Soon
Warren was dreaming about a volcano out of which sprouted a horned, Fantasia-like demon that threw purplish
lightning bolts at a smoky, ruined landscape. He wasn’t sure what eventually
jolted him awake, and he had just instinctively remembered the earlier floor
creaks overhead when he heard the front security door slam shut upstairs.
“Fuck,” Warren gasped. Don’t sit up and
hit your head, he thought sarcastically. He lay motionless waiting for some
other sound, his mind attempting to tick methodically through reasons the door
would have slammed. Only one, he
thought – someone coming in or going out.
With a sudden rush of courage, Warren rolled out from under the table (don’t turn your back on the darkness!,
his younger self shouted), stood, and willed himself through the lightless room
until he got to the door and light switch. He flicked it on with an index
finger and whirled around to survey the room, which was empty, of course. He
stood there several seconds and was just about to head upstairs when the
upstairs floor creaked, this time toward the end of the room, beyond the pool
table. “All right, asshole,” Warren said quietly, “Time to end this.” He looked
around and rummaged in cardboard boxes for a weapon – his dad had owned a few
military-issue pistols that were surely long gone – but found nothing more
sinister than what appeared to be a third- or fourth-grade school photo of his
sister in a silver metal frame. Despite the amateurish book and ruler outlines
etched into the frame, it was solid and heavy, which he proved to himself by
slapping it into his palm a few times. “OK, sis. Let’s go,” he said.

Warren
sped past the darkened bedroom to his left and concentrated on taking the
stairs two at a time, which did nothing to prevent the hairs on the back of his
neck from prickling up like always. He stepped into the kitchen, hit the light,
and lifted the picture frame prepared to strike, but there was no one there.
“Hello?” he called after a beat and held his breath to focus his hearing. Not a
sound. He walked across the long kitchen floor, creaking as he went and blankly
comparing his creaks to the ones he’d heard downstairs, senses alert for any
disturbance. His pulse quickened as he peeked into the entry hall, but the
front door was closed and locked just like he’d left it. He walked to it,
turned the deadbolt, and slowly opened the inner door. The metal security door
was closed as well. Warren pushed on it gingerly, but it had no give
whatsoever. He sighed, stepped up to the security door, and looked out the
window.

A
dark shape appeared to be moving where the corners of the yard and the driveway
met the street. Warren stared at the shape with incomprehension. His first
unbidden thought was that it was a trash bag, but he hadn’t yet set out
anything to throw away. A dog?, he
wondered. No, it was too flattened, seemed too formless. But it was definitely
moving – he could see that now.

Warren
turned the deadbolt, opened the door, and stepped out onto the cold concrete
front step before walking into the dewy grass, never taking his eyes from the
dark shape, whose slowly moving surface bore a yellowy sheen from the
streetlight. Stepping around one of the yard’s lone remaining trees, he was
about five feet from the shape when he stopped abruptly and went cold from the
inside out.

The
shape was indeed a large black trash bag that pulsed weakly in and out at
irregular intervals and angles. Warren could hear something sliding and pushing
against the smooth plastic as the movements continued. He stepped closer
despite the rising panic and started to hear whimpers. “Hey,” he said
involuntarily. It was then he realized someone was inside the bag, the pulsing
movements feeble attempts to tear the plastic and escape.

“Hey,”
he said again without really knowing he’d done it. He stepped right up next to
the bag and put his hands on his knees, peering intently at the jerkily
undulating shape. I have to call the
police, Warren thought, and he had just slapped at his right hip looking
for his phone when the metal security door slammed shut again. “FUCK!” he
shouted, jumping back and nearly falling down. He looked at the front door, but
no one was there. And then the bag said his name.

Warren.

He
looked down at the bag. It was torn open. A naked, jaundiced figure lay coiled
up inside but moving slowly, an elbow and a forearm appearing, and then a face
in profile. Warren stared, eyes wide. The picture frame slid out of his sweaty
palm and hit the ground.

It
was his mother.

Warren.

Her
head turned slowly toward him. Her skin was yellow and saggy, with grime
visible in the creases even in the wan light.

Warren.

She
looked at him with mustardy eyeballs. Her voice was a croaky whisper, her
throat clotted.

Warren. Run.

Warren
began to sob. “Mom!” he managed. “What is this?”

Run. A thin arm the
color of fish belly then pushed out of the bag opening, wrapped itself around
his mother’s body, and pulled her with obvious effort farther down into the
bag. Her face contorted into the most anguished look he’d ever seen before her
body doubled in on itself painfully and disappeared.

“Mom!”
he shrieked. Then Warren threw himself onto his knees and reached in with both
arms to pull his mother out, but he fell into the bag, into darkness, and he
lost consciousness, the scent of old earth and fresh decay in his nostrils.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Warren
awoke to a dull ache down his right side. He lifted his head, but his neck had
such a crick he couldn’t lift it far. He opened his eyes and was hopelessly
confused for a few seconds, because what he saw was his car. He blinked at it a
few times and then craned his neck around despite the pain. He was in the front
yard, curled up in his gym shorts and t-shirt, shivering from the chill, wet
with dew, exposed skin prickly and cross-hatched from the crisp autumn grass.

It
was early daylight, perhaps 6:30 a.m. Warren lay his head back down on the
ground for a moment and tried to gather thoughts. When details from the night
before began coalescing, he remembered the dark shape and why he had come
outside, and he shot up off the ground with a panicked groan despite the
soreness in his side and neck. His bare feet scuffed along the rough gray
driveway as he balanced himself and looked down where the trash bag had been
last night. But other than a flattened patch where he had lain (all night, he
thought with distaste), the grass showed nothing. He looked instinctively up at
the front door and scanned the immediate vicinity in front of him. Nothing
seemed amiss. Warren exhaled as if he hadn’t done so in hours. “Fuckin’-A,” he
blurted and laughed.

Shaken
by the lingering images but relieved nonetheless, Warren walked slowly down the
driveway and sidewalk to the front door. He was about to mount the small steps
to the porch when he froze.

There
were dirty smears all over the porch’s painted concrete, as though someone with
muddy feet had repeatedly slipped while trying to enter the house.

Warren
stared at this sight until a wiry panic made him look down. The short expanse
of gray concrete between the grass and the steps also bore streaks of mud along
with a few larger clogs, and he had stepped right in it all. He lifted his
right foot to inspect the sole – it was filthy.

“Shit,”
he spat and hopped backward into the grass where he dragged them one at a time
to get rid of the mud. When they were cleaner and damp with dew, he looked back
up at the porch, saw the streaky mud again, and exhaled irritatedly through his
nostrils.

“I
am going inside. I am getting dressed. I am gathering my shit. I am locking the
door. And I am leaving.” Warren said all this firmly and pointedly as though
trying to convince himself to do it. He maneuvered around the mud and opened
the metal security door (no mud on the
doorknob, his mind noted). But his strides into the house were short-lived.
Once inside the foyer, what he saw stopped his motion with the force of a large
fist in the middle of his chest.

There
were more muddy streaks on the foyer’s white ceramic tile and on the kitchen’s
old, indented carpet. And beyond that lay a torn black trash bag. It was empty
but dirty and visibly stretched, as though something inside had forced its way
out. Not fully aware that he was doing so, Warren walked forward to see what he
already knew was there beyond the bag. Muddy streaks, splayed at crazy angles
on the carpet and extending to the end of the kitchen, all the way to the door
that led to the laundry room and the stairs.

I should leave
right now,
Warren mused, but everything’s downstairs
– clothes, car key, phone, everything. The thought of his phone made him
look on the wall where his parents’ old landline phone always hung. It was
still there. Call 911, his mind
shouted. And tell them what?, he
countered. Someone tracked mud into the
house and left a trash bag behind?

“No,”
he said aloud back to himself. “Say someone’s in the house.” An intruder, he added mentally. Stepping
to the phone, careful to avoid the mud, he plucked the handset out of its
cradle, put it to his ear, and started to dial but realized there was no dial
tone. Punching the numbers anyway did nothing. As he began to hang up, he heard
a sound like low white noise. He put the handset back to his ear. “Hello?”

Intruder. Back to a single
voice, the same raspy one as before. Then, after a beat, came a different
voice. It was loud and booming and guttural and furious.

INTRUDER!

“GODDAMN
IT!” Warren shouted involuntarily, and he threw the handset at the wall. “FUCK
YOU!” he screamed, nearly hysterical.

The
voice from the phone was repeating INTRUDER!
over and over so loudly Warren could hear it clearly even with the handset
lying on the floor six feet away from him, its long, tangled cord still swaying
after his throw. He scrambled over and grabbed the cord so he could hang up,
but he had too much slack, and the handset shot off the floor, smacked him in
the knee, and then ricocheted upward, narrowly missing his chin and nose. After
he finally grasped the handset, the voice still bellowing, he slammed it down
into the cradle and marched toward the stairs, sidestepping the bag and the
mud, maniacally determined to leave as fast as possible.

Before
he made it to the stairs, though, he heard one of the bedroom doors pop open down
the hall back beyond the front door, and he froze in place.

Heavy
footsteps in the hall.

“Who’s
there?” Warren called.

The
footsteps stopped, but he still heard the floorboards creak as if under
shifting weight.

“Answer
me,” Warren demanded. “Who’s there?”

The
same voice from the phone, the quieter one: Intruder.
Warren’s heart felt like it would stop. He tried to say something, but his
mouth and throat suddenly felt sandblasted.

The
louder voice again: INTRUDER!

Warren
ran. Out of the kitchen, down the stairs two and three at a time. He bolted
into the rec room and all the way to the pool table, throwing himself
underneath to grab his bag and windbreaker. His head was a maelstrom of wild
thoughts (Fuckin’ house is haunted! Lost
my fuckin’ mind! Haven’t smoked pot or done acid or been blackout drunk in
years!), and then he collapsed, openly weeping from fear and stress.

His
sobs subsided after a few minutes, and he lay there with his face in the old
carpet, snot and tears running into the fibers. My phone. Alice, he thought suddenly. He propped up on his elbows and
reached for his phone. Dead. He’d evidently fallen asleep without plugging it
in. “Of fucking course,” he said bitterly and wiped his messy nose on his bare
arm. Just leave, he thought. Just leave.

Before
he could push himself off the floor, a billiard ball rolled on the table
surface a few feet above his head. Warren froze and held his breath. He heard
the ball’s rolling cease as it bumped softly against a rail. A few seconds of
total silence. Then another ball rolled. And then came a sound like an entire
roomful of billiard balls hitting the surface in a cascade, repeatedly knocking
and rolling like indoor thunder, and soon billiard balls were raining off the
creaky and swaying table, bouncing onto the carpet and rolling all over the
room, clacking against each other and the baseboards, as though a tornado had
sucked up a billiard hall and spewed its contents all over creation. Warren
watched with wide eyes and was sure he could feel the threads of his sanity
snapping apart. Eventually he just put his head down and hoped it would stop.

After
a time, there was silence again. Warren looked up and around and saw mounds of
billiard balls everywhere around the table and the room, piled atop each other
despite their surface slickness. He snorted a nervous laugh in spite of himself
at the ludicrousness of the scene.

Then
he heard the creaking upstairs. Feet moving over the floorboards. This time,
though, the sound was heavier, more definite. And soon it became a series of
booming steps, like someone in cinder-block shoes running through the kitchen,
running to the stairs and toward him, bounding down to the basement level.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. The sound was impossibly loud. Warren thought his heart
would explode in terror.

With
nowhere to run, Warren balled himself up, still under the pool table, face in
the carpet, hands covering his head, knees at his chest. Go away go away go away!, his mind repeated.

Soon
there was silence again. Warren looked up, hoping the balls wouldn’t be there,
but they were. He listened for footsteps in the room but heard nothing. After
gathering his courage, he climbed out from under the table and stood up.

There
really were mounds of billiard balls all over the large room. Easily hundreds
of them. The tabletop held plenty too. Warren looked up expecting to see a hole
in the ceiling, punched through by falling billiard balls, but it was intact.

“Fuck
this,” he muttered and dropped to the floor to cram his clothes, shoes and
socks, windbreaker, and phone into his bag. Then he stood up and turned around
to leave and had just begun to maneuver around the balls when he saw movement
to his immediate right. A mini-avalanche of billiard balls clacked down the
slope of a large mound, rolling into his feet and revealing a black hole around
which the surrounding billiard balls somehow maintained their positions, as
though they were shiny round bricks packed into mortar. And then came a sound
he’d heard the night before: a slippery pushing against plastic, trying to get
out. Warren wanted to look away but found he couldn’t. Black plastic began to
stretch outward from the hole. Run, Warren’s mind screamed, but he was
transfixed.

A
tear appeared in the plastic, followed by familiar yellowed flesh, mottled with
grime.

Warren. His mother again.

Warren. Run.

Run.

But
it was too late. The thin white arm shot out of the mound and snatched Warren’s
calf so hard and fast that he fell and did the splits, like a bad cheerleader.
The arm already had his right leg halfway inside the hole, and he felt himself
being slowly dragged over billiard balls and carpet toward that opening. Warren
screamed wordlessly and fought to get loose, but what had been set in motion
would not be stopped. As he was pulled into the hole, his left hip in agony
from his backward-stretched left leg, he struggled for purchase on the mound of
billiard balls, but his hands just slid around on the smooth surfaces. Then he
passed completely into the hole, the stench of decay and fetid earth filling
his head, and he was gone.

1 comment:

This fuh-king RULES! I printed it out to read at home after work, and, wouldn'tcha know I'd pick a night when the wind's up and it's dropping limbs and stuff on the house. Usually I blame odd noises in the house on my cat, but he was sitting with me, so it was either the wind, or... you did it! :) Great details (the dented carpet thing made me jealous). I tend to read like a mechanic, so as I was going I was thinking, "If I were writing this I'd mention something about how the house sounded different without furniture," and just as I was thinking that, damn if you didn't mention that! :) I love when stuff like that happens. Excellent build-up of atmosphere in a perfect setting to have creepy stuff happen... and then you delivered big on the creepystuff! You actually got me creeped out by trash bags, billiard balls, and the telephone. Good work!